Death of the Son (EP 1)
[A mathematician friend recently challenged me to do something which he wanted to do but couldn't but which he claimed I could: namely to write, with some minimal degree of historical and especially character verisimilitude, a murder mystery set in the 4th century AD. Since I can't resist such a challenge or such flattery, since my writing time is limited, since I've never tried writing fiction in installments before and since the whimsical Dickensian/Flash-Gordon-y quality of such a format appeals to me, especially for a self-consciously pulpy genre pot-boiler like a 4th century murder mystery, I decided to do it in installments in this column. The next installment will come at some later point (definitely not next week); and who knows how many there will be?]
He stood in the dusty sand of the arena, shaded (but barely) by the brick wall beneath the stands, as they led the day's victims forward: ten men, women, and children, clothed (but barely), stony-eyed and defiant. When they reached the center of the arena, where the black-clad carnificines shuffled nervously, they and their guards alike stood fast, turned, and waited, their eyes fixed to a point above his head.
After only a few moments, the chief guard (not a centurion or even the leader of a cohort, but a mere auxiliary commander, and a German) nodded, then drew his long xiphos from its sheath as theatrically as he could manage, rounded on the prisoners, and grasped the first victim firmly by the arm.
The crowd in the arena seemed to have been holding its breath, and now released it. It was a young woman, thirty at most, but pale and thin, with long, dark hair and dark eyes that stood out of her face,
In that one moment, the mood in the arena had shifted, subtly but definitely.
Many different things drew men (and women, and children) to the arena on days like today, just as many different spirits animated the magistrates that presided over such displays. One could always tell, however, absolutely and infallibly, what kind of familiar spirit would preside on that particular day by the first victim chosen.
If the magistrate was congenitally reluctant about his task (and this was becoming increasingly common, as the angry Imperial missives read aloud almost daily in the piazza testified), the first victim would be a strong, hale man, otherwise undesirable, perhaps (many in the crowd, he knew, would say), not a real Christian, a real believer at all, but just a criminal. He, of course, knew like the magistrates that the matter was hardly that simple: Christian and criminal were by no means mutually exclusive categories, and it was always possible to find some margin of Christians diverging from the Way or doomed criminals succumbing to the allure of a sudden conversion and dramatic death. Such events rarely drew large crowds; by this point in the Campaign, even the magistrates knew that the audience would be mostly pious Christians who felt duty-bound (and safe) enough to support their weaker brethren.
If the magistrate was weak, insecure, afraid of both his task and his superiors, the first victim would be a young man, a child, really, or an old man near death--anyone who looked both weak and fearful enough to resist badly and die quickly. He had seen magistrates break down and cry at a denunciation from a strong victim, or even flee in terror from the arena; and then ever after preside over the torture of no one but small boys and elders so decrepit that their voices could not be heard from the stands and they died at the first bodily shock. These events drew the largest consistent crowds, for reasons he could not be sure of; at first, he had though it was merely perversion, such as drew a small, determined crowd of devotees to the regular executions, but had gradually realized that such crowds were in essence as fearful as their masters.
The truly fanatical among the Imperial service, as well as the truly bureaucratically committed, the truly insane, and the true careerist climbers (groups not easily distinguished) naturally targeted the leadership, intellectual and official, of the Church, always beginning with the bishop, or if not he, then his right-hand priest, or if not he, certainly some important layman in Imperial service, some brilliant intellectual from a school of philosophers, to test their mettle in open conflict, descending into the arena themselves to argue with their victims and offer salvation up to the very moment of death. There were few of such magistrates, and fewer every day; either because by now, after a long, failed Campaign, they had been rewarded by Diocletian and Dia with promotion, or driven from office by the hatred of the people.
When a magistrate selected a young woman as the first victim of the day, though, it could mean only one thing; and the crowd knew it as well as he. There were no more cheers, no more hum of regular activity and happy anticipation, and as he looked up towards the stands he could see the largest section of the already small crowd (the crowds had been smaller every day...) filing slowly towards the exits. Those that remained were either ashamed, shifting their feet and not looking at their neighbors, or wild-eyed and beyond shame; one old woman sitting far off by herself, certainly a Christian, perhaps a relative of one of the condemned, was quietly weeping.
Young, female victims produced shame and, eventually, sympathy; if they showed any endurance at all, lasted at all longer than the minimum expected (and crowds always underestimated with women), it would be seen by the crowd as a defeat and a humiliation for them, the magistrate, the Emperors, and the Jovian Kingdom itself. Mixed into a larger crowd of victims, women could draw little attention; but put first, they showed nothing other than the personal desires of the magistrate. He could almost see him, the Logistes himself, looking as he always did, his eyes bulging, his thin hair plastered to his face, sweating with the heat, rubbing his hands together again and again as though to protect them from the cold.
It was then that he what he had felt it so many times before, what he had felt on every such day since the Campaign had begun: a wave of overpowering, deafening shame, washing over his whole body, making his hands shake, his knees buckle, his teeth chew bitterly at his tongue, his eyes close, burying him in darkness. How much longer, my Lord...?
He was no longer by the wall, now, but dressed in the garb of a carnifex, and looking into the eyes of the young woman. She opened her mouth to speak--
"Theodotus."
For a moment after he had woken up, he did not know where, or even who, he was. His first emotion was confusion, and his first thought, absurdly, that is not my name. As he always did when he woke, though, his first action, before even thought, was to bring his hand up to his face, to his right eye and the empty socket from which it had been plucked many years before.
Yes, he thought, as he caressed it with his fingers, yes, I am he.
With that, as it always did, memory and will returned to him. His eyes snapped open, and he rolled out of his cot.
The room was narrow, practically a cell (cell!), with stone floors and a small window by the head of his bed. There was only one chair, set by the door; but there was a man seated on it, dressed in dark clothes, with his head bowed. Though Theodotus had moved quite suddenly, he did not flinch.
"Who is it?"
Only then did the man who had said his name look up. He was pale as Persian, and as always to Theodotus seemed terribly young, far too young for his position and responsibilities. His beard, such as it was, was both thin and closely-cut, nearly invisible beside the pallor of his face; it made him look like a Roman. At their first meeting, he had struck Theodotus as a pretty boy, almost effeminate; but that impression had been contradicted the first time he heard him speak, and destroyed utterly the first time he saw him angry. Something about his eyes and the strange, still way he held the muscles of his face made him, in fact, far more terrifying than any centurion or governor he had ever known. He had seen those eyes reduce a proud, painfully dignified old man--a priest who had exploited a slave-girl--to a distraught child, lying on the marble floor of the Cathedral, weeping uncontrollably, banging his head against the ground in the force of his abandonment, kissing the bishop's feet and the hem of his robes, begging for forgiveness.
"My lord?"
Eustathius smiled. As he did so, Theodotus noticed for the first time that he was dressed, not as he always had been when he saw him, in the fine, heavy embroidered white and gold tunic that had for more than a century served as the uniform of the bishop of Antioch, but in a threadbare robe of dark, coarse cloth. So this is what he sleeps in... Cloth of such rough a weave would give any high-born man unbearable discomfort, especially at night and in the heat of the summer. That Eustathius wore it, apparently, whenever off duty only further confirmed what Theodotus had known the first time he heard him speak: the man is a fanatic...
Such men did not usually become bishops of sees like Antioch; but in the atmosphere of open warfare that had prevailed when Hosius had come, Eustathius had no doubt seemed a natural (if unorthodox) choice: brilliant, ascetic, young, vigorous, already (if very recently) elected bishop of a large city in the same province, but standing well apart from the rivalries within the Antiochene Presbyterate: exactly what was needed to bring order to a divided people and put an end to Eusebius' plotting. Hosius had been already quite old, Eustathius very young, but the two clerics, Theodotus thought, had much in common nonetheless; most of all a sort of burning, purifying intensity that expressed itself without break and with complete consistency in both thought and action. The quality I lack more than any other.
"Theodotus." Eustathius said again, quietly. The smile, always hesitant, vanished, and he looked down again. As Theodotus stopped considering Eustathius himself, he began, involuntarily, to consider the circumstances. Judging by the light, it was still some hours before daybreak; judging by his dress and appearance, Eustathius must have risen straight from his bed to visit him, and in so doing had dared the streets of Antioch at an hour when no prudent man not desperately poor would do so. Without turning his head, Theodotus glanced at the shadows showing in the gap beneath his door: only one deacon, and one man with a lighter footfall, a bishop or civic official: no real guards at all. Whatever had brought Eustathius to him, the bishop had considered it urgent enough to risk death; and while for Eustathius that threshhold was lower than for virtually all other men, that was still no small thing.
And whatever it was that Eustathius had to ask or tell him, it was terrible enough that he, the plain-spoken fanatic, was finding it difficult to express.
"Theodotus..." he looked up finally, and tried to fix the deacon's eye with his gaze. Theodotus turned his head away. "Theodotus...I...I came to you after many hours of prayer, because...you were sent to us by God."
Theodotus continued to avoid his gaze. He had never heard the bishop speak like this to anyone, even his most trusted priests.
"When I first met you, I...I had doubts. You seemed...distant...and...too...involved, I thought...with the corrupt life of this passing age. I did not trust you."
Theodotus nodded. This, at least, was typical bluntness.
"But in these past months, I have come to see that your presence in the Church is the truly the will of the Lord. The Logos has given you...a gift, one denied to me and to most of the clerics of the Church..."
Despite Theodotus' efforts at avoidance, the bishop's eyes had not wavered from his face. "When you helped me with...the case of the woman...you did the work of God, and delivered us from a grave injustice, and the Church from great blood guilt. I saw clearly then that you were from him."
Theodotus, almost involuntarily, nodded his head. He had known this all before, had known it since the moment it happened, in fact, but it was still, somehow, flattering to hear it from the mouth of a man so slow to praise. Perhaps I took the right path after all.
When Eustathius had been made bishop of Antioch, no one, save his theological opponents, had had any doubts he would excel as a preacher and teacher of the faith, and even as an administrator; but few had had much hopes for him in the office of judge. It had been generally expected that he would do as most bishops of major sees had begun to do with the new laws and the new floods of claimants sent by the Emperor, and delegate the bulk of his duties to more qualified clerics. It had come as a great surprise, then, when he had insisted on personally devoting a part of each day to hearing cases and delivering judgments, seated on his cathedra for all the world like a bishop of a hundred years ago.
To Theodotus and his fellow deacons working in the episcopal court, this had been a most unwelcome development, and at first something approaching a fiasco. In his first few days as judge, Eustathius had rewritten their decisions, granted appeals from their previous judgments, ignored their recommendations, and, in one particularly embarrassing moment, turned a simple recompense suit into an opportunity for a sermon on charity and a payment from a wealthy benefactor of the Church to a shop worker so shamefully large that the rich man had not shown his face in the Cathedral since.
The case of the woman, though, as Eustathius called it, had been far more unusual. Murder suits were rarely brought to episcopal court; so rarely that he could recall only two. It was notorious that episcopal courts did not pass the death sentence or use torture or any other form of violent punishment; and while this fact was attractive to many classes of litigants, people accusing others of murder, even Christians, as a rule demanded more extreme and satisfying payment. Christians were appreciative, and even pagans were impressed, that the clergy took no part in blood guilt; but blood guilt was not avoidable when blood had been shed, and the Imperial courts were quite practiced in dealing with it. The bishop for mercy and reconciliation among men; but Caesar for the shedding of blood. So the old woman had expressed it to him, once upon a time.
That a murder case had found its way into the episcopal court of Antioch, then, was something worthy of note for all parties; but to Eustathius a matter of fear and almost horror. It had been only then that Theodotus had realized what lay behind the bishop's insistence on personally taking part in the cases: not pride or stubbornness, as he had first thought, but a deep, gnawing fear of failing in his duty and so bringing down the wrath of God upon himself and the Church. It was this fear, he had realized then, and the forcefulness of belief that arose from it, that made Eustathius able to break even the strongest of men.
The case had been simple enough; a woman, middle-aged, of Phrygian blood, perhaps, had accused her husband, a born Antiochene, of having killed her father, his father-in-law, with a millstone in their little shop. The evidence, such as it was, was quite strong. Not only could she produce both the body and the bloody millstone that had done the deed, but she swore before God and Christ that she had seen her husband come out of the back room only a few minutes before she had found her dead father there, the blood on his crown still fresh. Two more neighbors, both respectable shopkeepers and citizens of Antioch, swore by God and Christ (one added Apollo before being silenced by his neighbor) that they had seen the father-in-law and husband violently quarreling over money only the day before. "He would always complain to me," the man who had sworn by Apollo said, "about how her father might as well own the shop, and that the dowry she came with was more of a chain on his neck than coins in his hand. Couldn't stand the old man, he couldn't." The defendant himself, a big, dark, bearded Syrian who could have blended in on any street corner, had said hardly a word in his own defense, only looked sadly around the court at the bishop, the deacons surrounding him, and the other claimants waiting their turn patiently in the aisle of the basilica. Never once, though, did he look at his wife, or even glance in her direction.
And all this time Eustathius had sat on his throne, silent, his head bowed, his hands shaking with fear, praying that God would have mercy on the cruelty of man. When he raised his head at last, Theodotus knew that he was about to deliver his verdict--something merciful, but definite--and so struck in, deliberately, before he could do so.
"Why a millstone?"
Eustathius looked over at him, a small flash of anger in his eyes. Theodotus took a step backwards involuntarily, and for a moment his voice caught in his throat; he could see, so clearly at the moment, the bishops' estimation of him, and how small he appeared reflected in those eyes; and for a moment was simply transfixed by this vision, as he had not been by anything for years.
Then the moment passed, and he could see in the relaxation of Eustathius' face the decision to indulge him, at least for a little while; and he turned back to the woman.
"Why did your husband use a millstone to kill the old man?"
The woman looked confused. "My Lord, well...it's a large stone, and there's blood on it." She gestured mutely to the stone once again.
"Millstones are not common weapons in the streets of Antioch. Surely a flagstone, or a cobblestone, or a tile from a roof, or...what does your shop sell?"
The man was staring at Theodotus steadily, without expression. The woman glanced over at him nervously, as she had often done since the beginning of the procedure, almost (absurdly) as if she was seeking reassurance from the very man she was accusing of murder. "Well...we sell...that is, your Holiness...the shop sells leather goods, mostly. We get it from the tanner and the tent-makers and the book-makers, and we sell it to travelers and men who need cheap protection and those that require durable books. And..." She lost her breath.
"You traveled recently, to one of the villages in the countryside?"
She seemed lost for speech for a long moment. "My Lord...how did--" Eustathius was staring at him too. "My Lord, I...I only want my husband punished, so that God will forgive him and we can continue with our business. It has been...so hard..."
Theodotus was no longer listening. He was looking up, as he usually did when he stood there with his fellow deacons to hear and to punish, at the old windows of the Cathedral that he had seen broken by stones nearly thirty years before. He could remember, almost, how they had sounded when they shattered, and how the fragments glittered as they scattered through the air...
"You went to the countryside to convince your father to give you money, a portion of your inheritance, since the shop was doing so poorly. From your husband's complaints, your father was obviously a wealthy man; and such wealth comes from the countryside, from the land, not from shops such as yours. Your father owns a farm there, a large one, and as everyone knows the weather and harvests were very good this past year. He had just visited you in Antioch, and made both you and your husband feel very poor indeed; and you rode back with him in his carriage, a large one, and well-cushioned, because he asked you to go back with him, to be fed and cared for, to humiliate your husband. You killed him there, when he refused to give you what you needed to keep the shop going. You used a millstone, as most people do, because it was on hand, and because it was large and heavy enough to be rolled upon him and kill him without much strength or much resolve. You then brought his body, and the bloody millstone, back with you to the city in your father's own carriage. When you returned and met with your husband, he convinced you that the only way was for him to take the blame for the murder, and suffer the consequences, because he knew that you, and not him, could inherit your father's farm and the wealth that went with it. Also because he loved you, and loves you still, and because you are used to taking his advice in business matters. He expected to be killed for this, naturally, but while you were waiting in the proconsul's courtroom, someone told you of the new law that allowed cases to be appealed from him to the bishop, and that bishops did not put men to death, or scourge them, and that the new bishop was said to be very merciful. Then, when the proconsul was about to deliver judgment against your husband, you surprised him, and yourself, and appealed the case to divine judgment; and now you are here."
He had delivered all this almost without taking breath, and without emotion of any kind. When he looked down, though, he found the woman and her husband both weeping, and Eustathius' eyes fixed on his face, almost burning out of their sockets. It was only then, as he saw the image of himself reflected in the bishop's eyes transform from something small to something great, something reflective of that strange, fearfully close, but utterly foreign divinity that Eustathius held always in his mind's eyes, that Theodotus had felt something; though it was only the same shame he carried with him in his dreams.
"We bishops, we theologians, we look up to the Divinity, to bring down the mercy of Christ, and make earth conform itself to heaven..." Eustathius was still looking at his face, there in the dark room with the dark, threadbare cloak. "Often, though...we do not know men as well, perhaps, as we should. We know their nature, their essence, but not...not their falling away from it, and the thousand twisted paths they take as they wander. The greatest sinners are often the greatest deceivers, and heretics now walk among us clothed in sheep skins, as the Lord said. I have seen their machinations myself, and the cleverness and shamelessness with which they delude and deceive men like me. We do not understand sinful men as you do. We cannot read the secrets of their hearts. We wander as lambs in the midst of wolves, and perhaps that is how it must be. But to you God has given another gift, to know sinful men, wicked men, to know their hearts, and discover their sins. And though at first I did not think it, this is also a gift from God. For men cannot be saved until their sins are revealed. Never forget that, Theodotus."
How could I?
Eustathius paused, and drew in a deep breath. "There is something, then, which I must ask you to do, which none of my other deacons, none of my priests, and none of my bishops could do. Which I could not do."
Finally, Theodotus looked at his face. It was paler than usual, and drawn so tight it looked, in the dim light, like a skull. Theodotus realized for the first time that all through our meeting, and surely for hours before, the hours in which he had prayed and sweated alone, in his rough garment, in the rich bedroom that for him was more tormenting than any cell, he had been in utter agony, and was in agony still.
In the end, of course, the punishment for the woman had been far lighter than any Imperial magistrate would have given. For patricide and perjury, she was punished with a life of penitence, enforced by the Imperial guard, but enrolled among the widows of the Church. Her husband was allowed to inherit the farm, despite the Emperor's laws, and every month without fail grain or vegetables arrived at the Cathedral to swell the dole for the poor, and the orphans, and the widows.
This was, of course, the thing that he could do, and I could not.
Eusthatius drew in one more deep breath, and he knew it was coming at last.
"Crispus is dead. The Emperor...has murdered his son."
The bishop's face broke.
"I need you to find out why."
[To be continued...]
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